


(catch me) when i fall

by hegelsholiday



Category: Dreamcatcher (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/F, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 12:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20930600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hegelsholiday/pseuds/hegelsholiday
Summary: Yoohyeon had been taught how to be a good wife. Taught the virtues that women were expected to hold. To bow her head and hide her face like a proper lady. Yoohyeon had been taught that being chosen by the king was an honor.But nobody could've ever told her that she'd fall for his queen instead.





	(catch me) when i fall

**Author's Note:**

> blanket cw for the inherent dub-con of being able to "marry" a woman solely because A) she's a woman and B) the other party is the king, with the female party's compliance all but expected. nothing happens in this fic (in fact the male figure barely even appears in person), but the power imbalance is still there.

i.  
Yoohyeon’s face is softer, rounder, when she lines up with the rest of the girls in front of the king. The incense in the room is making her dizzy. She catches the eye of the queen, severe and sharp looking in the full headdress of the court, smiling benevolently down at her, and feels a little better. 

“It is an honor to be able to serve my country,” she says after she bows low to the ground. The train of her dress drags uncomfortably long, and the eyes of the court linger far longer. 

Not as long as the queen’s eyes though. 

The king spares her a smile. “You’ll do.” 

ii.  
Yoohyeon tortures herself with the nervous tension of it all, helping one of the palace maids move her things into a sparsely decorated courtyard. The energy crackles in her bones straight down to her toes. 

The thing is--there were thousands of other girls who could’ve been chosen to be married off. Yoohyeon had a life outside of artfully grown rose garden walls. Yoohyeon had dreams and hopes beyond the stifling confines of etiquette and tea and service. 

Foolish dreams maybe. Little girl’s dreams about running away from civilization, where rules about men and women didn’t apply, where she could walk the streets freely without having to bow her head and cover her face. They really do seem foolish now. 

“Do you ever feel like your life isn’t yours?” Yoohyeon blurts out on that first day, in front of the queen with the rest of the concubines lined up along her sides. It’s a mistake. She knows it’s a huge violation of etiquette, except the queen just laughs a little. 

“Everyday,” she says. She sounds so sad. It crawls across Yoohyeon’s skin and up her neck. She shivers. 

Yoohyeon doesn’t think it really right that a woman like her should be so sad. She’s the queen. The mother of the nation. In fact, none of this seems right, but Yoohyeon doesn’t say that out loud. 

“You are a married woman now in the eyes of gods and men,” the queen says, “even if the king would never deign to go through the traditional rites with you. I suppose congratulations are in order.” 

Yoohyeon feels a little weak at the knees. It must be the novelty of it all. One of the ladies next to her pats her shoulder in a friendly gesture. 

“How does it feel?” she asks. 

“It’s--” Daunting. Infuriating. Terrifying. “It’s a pleasure to be able to serve my country,” she repeats at last. 

“Yes,” the lady next to her says dryly. When she smiles, it doesn’t go quite to her eyes, but it’s close. Enough for Yoohyeon to smile back. “Things get better eventually. it’ll never go completely away.” 

“I’m Yoohyeon,” she says. 

“Siyeon.” 

\---  
Yoohyeon thinks the queen isn’t quite what she expected. She’s heard all the stories, of course, studied enough of the histories to make a good wife, able to lead in functions and not embarrass her husband. Queens are vicious, plotting, and above all, they despise the harem of concubines beyond belief. 

Rivals for the king’s affection. Rivals for power. 

But Yoohyeon’s queen is different. Laughter comes easy to her. There’s a level of informality to her that Yoohyeon doesn’t think is really allowed, an easiness that stiff headdresses don’t convey. 

Yoohyeon’s queen is elegant and beautiful and everything and nothing a queen should be. 

\---  
None of the other women are either. Yoohyeon doesn’t know what she expects when one of the senior concubines invites her to her gardens. Kim Bora is loud and spirited and full of life in the privacy of her chambers, when she sends all but one of her handmaids away and kicks her shoes off, rubbing at her bare feet and muttering at how uncomfortable they are. Yoohyeon looks on in awe. 

“Would you mind?” she gestures at her own feet. 

Bora waves at her. “Be my guest.” 

It’s surreal almost. Yoohyeon had been taught that the other concubines would be the most vicious, would never allow themselves affection that wasn’t calculated and used for a later time, but Bora seems so refreshingly genuine that this doesn’t feel like a plot either. 

Yoohyeon is starting to think maybe everything she’d been taught was wrong. 

iii.  
To Yoohyeon’s relief, the king does not summon her for her services. Rather, it is his queen who regularly sends for her, in increasingly private settings that Yoohyeon does not feel she has quite earned yet. It’s almost, Yoohyeon thinks sardonically, as if instead of marrying the king, she’s married his queen instead. 

“Are you happy here?” the queen asks her. In her private quarters, the draperies are thick and embroidered with signs for good luck. The queen herself sits, playing with the long beaded curtains idly. The rapidly cooling tea tray lies between them, nearly untouched. 

“I--” the proper response lodges itself somewhere on her tongue. The way the queen is looking at her, Yoohyeon feels like that’s not the response she’s looking for exactly, and Yoohyeon wants to give the right one, suddenly. Feels like she owes it to her, this woman who, by all rights, should hate her. “I don’t--” she thinks of Siyeon’s words on the first day. _Things get better_. “It’s not as terrible as I was expecting.” 

The queen smiles at her. She finally picks up the delicate handle of a teacup, and Yoohyeon feels like she has passed some test of worthiness. “You get used to most things around here, except the lack of company, I suppose. but well, that’s what all of us are here for, right? No point in keeping so many women together without talking to each other.” 

“Thank you for taking care of me, Your Grace,” she says. 

“Minji,” the queen says. she takes a sip of tea and wrinkles her nose. “Call me Minji in private. We’re all family here.” 

\---  
“Can you read?” Siyeon asks her one day. Minji likes to hold court in one of the secluded chrysanthemum groves, the one with the small pond in the middle. She claims it’s because the sun over the rooftops brings out the breadth of morning scenery. Yoohyeon suspects that she merely likes feeding the little round-eyed fish in the pond. 

“A little,” Yoohyeon admits. “I tried to get my brother to teach me, when we were younger.” Back then, the leftover scraps of his failed attempts to write had seemed so valuable. 

“We’ll teach you,” Minji says. “God knows we have enough time on our hands.” 

“Okay,” Yoohyeon says. She must be grinning far more than is dignified, from the way her smile stretches across her face. 

\---  
“He’s grown so much now,” Minji exclaims, cooing. The delight flickers in her eyes, bright and unadulterated. 

Beside her, Bora lets out a sound that could almost be mistaken for a squeal. “Siyeon he’s gotten even cuter.” 

The toddler in Siyeon’s arms wobbles a little, staring at all of them with big, dark eyes. Yoohyeon finds herself catching the look on Minji’s face. It flashes by, once, and it’s gone before she can blink. There’s so much longing in there that Yoohyeon herself blinks, taken aback. 

“He’ll make a wonderful ruler when he’s older,” she says, watching as Siyeon’s son crawls over to her. He’s so soft. vulnerable. Yoohyeon thinks about how precious and rare sons are in the royal household and hopes he’s lived at least this long without someone trying to hurt him. 

Siyeon looks on proudly, her face soft. 

(It’s later, much later, long after it matters, that Yoohyeon learns that Minji herself is sterile.) 

iv.  
It’s late in the evening, when one of Yoohyeon’s handmaidens, an eager, bright-eyed girl named Hayoon, comes in. Nearly half a year has passed now, and Yoohyeon is almost eager to celebrate the new year with the women of the palace. 

The look on her face is awash with happiness. Hayoon skirts forward and clasps her hands with Yoohyeon’s, a gesture of informality that she’s been trying to train into her for months now, and if it weren’t for her next words, Yoohyeon would be celebrating.

“Rumor has it that the king will send for you tomorrow evening after he returns from his hunt,” she says, and Yoohyeon goes cold all over. “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah, I heard it from one of the eunuchs. Unnie, this is wonderful news--he’ll be immediately floored by you--I mean, just look at you.” 

Some part of Yoohyeon registers her words. Somewhere below her heart, over her left rib cage. “Yeah,” she smiles weakly, when she realizes Hayoon is waiting for her response. “This is--this is wonderful.” 

“You have to get ready unnie.” The smile has yet to fade from Hayoon’s face. It feels frozen on Yoohyeon’s. “The queen sent you a really pretty necklace a while back, do you think--” 

“Hayoon--” Yoohyeon says. She feels like she’s going to be sick. “Do you think we can do that tomorrow? I have to go pay the queen my respects for the evening.” 

“Of course,” Hayoon says and all too quickly bows out of the room. 

\---  
“Word has it the king plans to send for me tomorrow.” 

“Congratulations,” Minji’s face is carefully blank. 

“Minji,” she says. “would you. if I asked you to--” 

“What--” Minji’s face is so, so close. Yoohyeon can’t breathe. 

“Would you--would you teach me--I’ve never--”

“Oh, Yoohyeon,” Minji says. She sounds so quietly sad that something in Yoohyeon’s chest aches. “I can’t--”

“I want it to be you,” she says. I _need_ it to be you. 

She thinks of the younger brother they sent off to be a soldier and feels much the same way. Yoohyeon is a soldier in a war she can’t win, off to face the gallows for a crime she hasn’t committed. 

Minji pulls her close. “Yeah, okay.” She muffles it into the strands of Yoohyeon’s hair, hands soothing at her back, and even if it’s just for one night Yoohyeon needs this, needs this like she didn’t know she could need anything. 

“Kiss me,” she says, and when Minji leans forwards and presses their lips together and Yoohyeon feels like her center of gravity has shifted completely, she decides it’s alright. 

“You’ll regret this,” Minji mutters. “I don’t want you to.”

“I won’t,” Yoohyeon says. she pulls Minji closer, tugging at long sleeves and silk. She wants to feel Minji everywhere, the way Minji’s touch crowds into her skin. “I won’t.”

“Okay,” Minji says. She sounds a little breathless as Yoohyeon helps her undo the clasps of her dress. Her fingers ghost across Yoohyeon’s shoulders, removing silk and heavy jewelry and all the things that Yoohyeon had never wanted. “You’re really beautiful, you know that?” 

_So are you_ Yoohyeon means to say, but Minji’s kissing her again, so she settles for tracing the words into the back of her neck. The I love you gets stuck somewhere in the back of her throat, a terrifying realization Yoohyeon isn’t ready to face, but she thinks Minji must know it already, from the way Yoohyeon gasps against her mouth. 

“They might kill you for this,” Minji says when she pulls away this time. It’s easy, in the quiet corners of the room, to pick out that she says _you_, not _us_. 

“What about you?” Yoohyeon murmurs. She shrugs off the rest of her dress. Feels the cloth drag at the edge of her skin until she’s left only in her shift, bare, vulnerable. Exposed. “I want this. Because it’s you. Just you.”

Minji seems to freeze, her movements stilted. “You give me too much credit.” And then her hands are edging at the insides of Yoohyeon’s thighs, places where Yoohyeon shudders and gasps at, and Yoohyeon quickly forgets what she’s about to say. 

v.  
Minji crawls into her bed after it happens. sometime past midnight. Yoohyeon should protest because one of her handmaidens could pass by in the middle of the night to rekindle the fire and what would she think, seeing the queen lying in bed with her, but Yoohyeon’s exhausted and her nerves have frayed to the last edges. 

“Are you alright?” Minji whispers against her skin. “How did it go?” 

Yoohyeon squeezes her eyes shut. “He’d heard I had a talent for song. so I sang in front of him, for a while, and then--” 

“You don’t have to talk about it--” Minji says. her hands are tracing circles into Yoohyeon’s back. It’s so right and so wrong and Yoohyeon doesn’t want her to stop. “I’m sorry--I shouldn’t have asked.” 

“No, no,” Yoohyeon says. She thinks she might be crying. “Nothing happened. I panicked--I couldn’t do it.” 

Minji tugs her closer. “You’re okay,” she murmurs. “You didn’t have to do anything. I’m so, so sorry Yoohyeon.” 

“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “It’s what we’re here for--to serve.” 

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Minji says. “I thought I did a good job--distracting him. making sure he wouldn’t choose you. Maybe I was a little selfish, at the beginning, but I didn’t want you to become like some of the other ladies here.” 

Yoohyeon exhales quietly, staring at the gilded ceiling above her. “This was never your fault.” 

“Yoohyeon,” Minji says, after a stretch of silence where Yoohyeon thinks she must’ve fallen asleep. “What if I told you that I was going to kill my husband?” 

She snaps awake. Dimly, she realizes that this is the first time Minji has ever referred to the king directly as her husband. “Who else knows?” 

“Nobody else. I couldn’t risk anybody else’s life in this, but I started planning a while ago--when Siyeon’s son became strong enough to be parted from her.” 

Her head spins. 

Minji clutches at Yoohyeon’s hand, threading their fingers together. “Yoohyeon, I’m going to kill a king, but if I don’t and they find out--they’re going to ask. They’re going to ask the ladies here first and I don’t care what you do make sure you lie and say you didn’t know what I was doing, make sure you tell them that I hated you, I don’t care what, just make sure they don’t take you away too.” 

“They won’t,” Yoohyeon says. She squeezes Minji’s hand. “They won’t because I won’t let them. Siyeon-unnie and Bora-unnie won’t either.” 

Minji laughs shakily. “Yes, yes.” That was the first thing she’d taught Yoohyeon after all. That her fellow concubines, her fellow women were the most human of all. “Yoohyeon, I’m so sorry.” 

Yoohyeon breathes. “We’re family, don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a historical au where the women living in an inherently patriarchal system chose to acknowledge each other's humanity and work together to make their situation salvageable rather than tearing each other down in a system where the ruling male's affections=more power. I don't think I quite pulled that off but ??? here's a thing I guess. writing hard send help.


End file.
